Free Republic

A taboo is something that is vehemently “forbidden based on moral judgment and religious beliefs.” When confronted with a taboo, we do not consider breaking it. The line is drawn so clearly that we dare not cross it. Incest is a good example. It is condemned in every culture. The idea of sexual relations with a sibling or one’s child is abhorrent and rejected as a matter of course. We are horrified by it. We recoil from it. It is off the table. We totally close the door to it. This keeps us out of trouble. The power of taboos...

It’s one thing to be tolerant of what once were known as “alternative lifestyles.” It’s another thing to be asked to celebrate them, as the exuberant mythologizers of Michael Sam and Johnny Weir ask us to do. And it is way beyond the pale to hold forth on any sort of sex life — perhaps apart from self-restraint — as if it’s a form of heroism. Yet the culture of the professional Left, enthusiastically aided by the establishment media, is going bonkers in pushing active homosexuality (or any one of several exotic variants thereof) as an absolute virtue. One can...

In 2006, 57 percent of Virginia’s electorate voted to amend their state’s constitution to define marriage as the union of a man and a woman. Last week, U.S. District Judge Arenda Wright Allen ruled the amendment unconstitutional. In 2004, 76 percent of Oklahoma’s electorate voted to amend their state’s constitution to define marriage as the union of a man and a woman. On January 14, 2014, U.S. District Judge Terence Kern ruled the amendment unconstitutional. In 2004, 66 percent of Utah’s electorate voted to amend their state’s constitution to define marriage as the union of a man and a woman....

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi offered marriage advice to single women this past Valentine’s Day: “Why would you get married? Why would anybody?” NowThis News published the video where Pelosi did the “do as I say, not as I do” liberal thing considering she’s been married for 50-years. Making it abundantly clear to which demographic she was speaking to – single women who overwhelmingly voted for President Obama in 2012, Pelosi frowned and shrugged about the whole marriage thing: “But I would say, you know, if you’re getting married…why are you getting married? Why would you get married? Why would...

Planned Parenthood’s president has already told the women of America that they need abortions on Valentine’s Day rather than flowers or a fancy dinner. plannedparenthood91Now, the Maryland affiliate of the nation’s biggest abortion company is telling women they need condoms instead of a wedding ring. In the days leading up to Valentine’s Day today, Planned Parenthood Maryland tweeted out a picture of a box that would normally contain a wedding ring, replaced with a condom. The picture contains the message, “Will you be my birth control?” That’s typical for Planned Parenthood: all sex, no relationship. Two more days until Valentine’s...

If you have a chance, I recommend each of you carve out the evening of Dec 20, from 7-9pm, to watch CNN. The show is called After Jesus: The First Christians, and it is an excellent and stimulating presentation of the first four centuries of the Christian faith. CNN kindly sent me an advanced copy and I have watched it in its entirety. Dec 21, in the morning, I would like to begin a conversation on this blog with those who watched it the evening before. (It will also be replayed Friday Dec 22 at 10pm and 1am; Saturday Dec...

An activist of FEMEN women's movement staged a protest action during a Christmas mass in the main cathedral of Cologne, Kolner Dom. The topless girl climbed onto the altar of the cathedral in protest against the Vatican propaganda of criminalization of abortions. The woman displayed a slogan "I am God" written on her body. "FEMEN demands Vatican elders and their fanatical followers should stop producing medieval chimera and bring religious dogma in line with the modern world and human rights," a press release from the movement said.

I’m sorry to arrive late to this controversy — explanation forthcoming in a later posting — but my impression is that the word “blacklist” has not been mentioned much in the debate over the Robertson family, GLAAD, and the A&E channel. Or if it has been mentioned, it certainly hasn’t had the central role that it should have had in this row. For what GLAAD has been operating is a classic blacklist operation. Its object is not to persuade those who disagree with it over the morality of same-sex relationships to change their minds. Nor is it principally intended to...

CHARLOTTE, N.C. — CHARLOTTE, N.C. _ A Charlotte, N.C., man blames the breakup of his marriage not only on the other guy, but also on the online infidelity service that he says made it happen. "Life is short," the Ashley Madison website coos. "Have an affair." Robert Schindler of Charlotte, N.C., says his ex-wife did just that. So, Schindler is suing her alleged partner in the tryst, along with Ashley Madison and its Canadian corporate parent, Avid Dating Life Inc. At play here is a legal clash between the old and the new. North Carolina remains one of only a...

Gay and lesbian rights activists are seeking to be the new “moral enforcers” and it is Christian religious conservatives who now need protection to be allowed to dissent against “the new orthodoxy”, it was claimed. Core Issues Trust, a Christian charity, is challenging a ban on its London bus advertisement reading: “Not Gay! Ex-Gay, Post-Gay and Proud. Get over it!” It was a response to a bus poster campaign by gay rights group Stonewall carrying the message: “Some people are gay. Get over it!” Paul Diamond, for the charity, told appeal judges that at the heart of the case was...

Over the past several decades, America has witnessed a profound change in the way women view men and marriage. It began with the baby boomer adage “never depend on a man.” This message resulted in a generation of women who turned their attention away from the home and onto the workforce. They did what their mothers told them to do: they became financially independent so they’d never have to rely on a husband. In time, “never depend on a man” turned into the full-blown belief that men are superfluous. In 2010 Jennifer Aniston claimed women needn’t “fiddle with a man”...

Buenos Aires, December 2nd, 2013 (LifeSiteNews.com) – Extremely disturbing video footage from Argentina shows a mob of feminists at a recent protest attacking and sexually molesting a group of Rosary-praying Catholic men who were peacefully protecting the cathedral in the city of San Juan from threats of vandalism. The women, many of them topless, spray-painted the men’s crotches and faces and swastikas on their chests and foreheads, using markers to paint their faces with Hitler-like moustaches. They also performed obscene sexual acts in front of them and pushed their breasts onto their faces, all the while shouting “get your rosaries...

Video at Gloria.tv in Buenos Aires, Argentina

OAKLAND, Calif. — The weekly meetings of Mouthing Off!, a group for students at Mills College in Oakland, Calif., who identify as gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender, always start the same way. Members take turns going around the room saying their names and the personal pronouns they want others to use when referring to them — she, he or something else. It’s an exercise that might seem superfluous given that Mills, a small and leafy liberal arts school historically referred to as the Vassar of the West, only admits women as undergraduates. Yet increasingly, the “shes” and “hers” that dominate...

“It’s a Catholic priest speaking at a Catholic school. It’s touchy,” said Tym Moss of the Bronx LGBTQ Center. Linger over that. A Catholic priest speaking at a Catholic school is touchy? You’d think that priests speak at Catholic schools every day and it would be completely unremarkable. But you don’t live in gay world. Well, actually you do. You just don’t know it yet. The prestigious Cardinal Spellman High School in the Bronx, created precisely to teach inner-city kids whose parents fight to keep them out of the disastrous New York Public School system, is under fire for inviting...

CHELSEA, MICH. — Kristi and Michael Burns have a lot in common. They love crossword puzzles, football, going to museums and reading five or six books at a time. They describe themselves as mild-mannered introverts who suffer from an array of chronic medical problems. The two share similar marital résumés, too. On their wedding day in 2011, the groom was 43 years old and the bride 39, yet it was marriage No. 3 for both. Today, their blended family is a sprawling, sometimes uneasy ensemble of two sharp-eyed sons from her two previous husbands, a daughter and son from his...

Mark Driscoll has attempted to briefly answer a very pressing and important question that should be on the radar screen of each and every Christian. The post is titled "Does God hate cotton blend T-shirts?" and deals with the prohibition against mixed threads in Deuteronomy 22:11 and Leviticus 19:19. Deuteronomy 22:11: “You shall not wear cloth of wool and linen mixed together.”Leviticus 19:19: Nor shall you wear a garment of cloth made of two kinds of material.” Driscoll, in his post, deals very superficially with the above question and basically ends up appealing to the classic three-fold division of the...

The owners of a Christian guesthouse who were ordered to pay damages for turning away a gay couple have lost their UK Supreme Court fight. Hazelmary and Peter Bull refused to let civil partners Steven Preddy and Martyn Hall stay in a double room at Chymorvah House in Marazion in Cornwall in 2008. The couple, who had already lost cases at Bristol County Court and the Court of Appeal, said they were "saddened". Mr and Mrs Bull have said they regard any sex outside marriage as a "sin". Steven Preddy (l) and Martyn Hall Steven Preddy (l) and Martyn Hall...

Pope Francis lays flowers at the foot of the statue of Our Lady of Lujan on May 8, 2013. Credit: Stephen Driscoll/CNA. Vatican City, Nov 26, 2013 / 06:02 am (CNA/EWTN News).- Pope Francis reaffirmed Catholic teaching on male priesthood in his first apostolic exhortation, while calling for a broader application of the “feminine genius” in Church life. “The reservation of the priesthood to males, as a sign of Christ the Spouse who gives himself in the Eucharist, is not a question open to discussion,” he said, “but it can prove especially divisive if sacramental power is too closely identified...

Dr. Donna Freitas, perhaps the nation’s leading expert on university hookup culture, has being doing research among college students and on college campuses regarding sex, the hookup culture, and student religiosity for several years.  She has produced many scholarly publications and studies.  One consistent finding she has observed is that evangelical college students are significantly less likely to hookup than any of their counterparts (Catholic or secular).  Why?  An excerpt from an interview: The attitudes toward sexuality on evangelical campuses were remarkably different from everywhere else. Everyone is struggling with sex, but they do it in very different ways.It’s impossible on...